Title says it all really, the store brought ice is always very different. Why is this?
Edit: I know I’m a moron, bought*
In: Chemistry
Engineer of very high end appliances here (has a Z in the name). Our executive team wanted clear ice badly because the customers thought that it was contaminants etc in the ice making it cloudy. When I asked my coworkers about this, not my project, the short answer is the cloudiness is air.
Basically when you pour water into an ice cube tray, micro-bubbles are introduced into the water. The water freezes on the outside first creating a shell not allowing the air to escape.
There are 2 methods to achieve clear ice. The first is to freeze the ice in layers, this allows any air to escape because each layer isn’t shelling in the air. The second way is to freeze the water very slowly, which usually is done with a large volume of water that takes hours to get down to temp and the air has time to escape.
The top comment mentioned freezing from the outside in, which is true, but said the cloudiness was from stress of the ice not being able to expand. Ice will expand no matter what, in fact there is no material on earth that can withstand the pressure of ice expanding. cloudiness = air, not stress.
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